From an off-list reply to Chis Pinnock:


On Sun, Aug 24, 2003 at 11:19:35AM -0700, Jonathan Stone wrote:
> There is a bug in the BIOS on some older Compaq deskside/desktop
> models (I've seen it on an A500 deskside) which is triggered
> by our  bootloader, or possibly boot selector (also by FreeBSD 4.x).
> 
> The symptom is that the Compaq reports ``invalid partition table'
> on a warm boot. Power-cycle it, and all is fine.
> 
> Maybe you got bit by this?

Seems like that's just what happened.

This is the 3rd or 4th time I've noticed a message to port-i386
matching the symptoms.  It's a particularly nasty bug, as it looks
like a NetBSD problem, and the actual cause is often masked (as it was
here) by a reboot or other drastic action after the initial failure.

Can we add a description of this Compaq BIOS bug, to some appropriate
documentation? Somewhere prominent enough  that it'll be noticed?
(I'm not sure what the right place is, or I'd do it...)